Juicy and Delicious
Chris Flynn
October 29
Given its connection to the world of film it’s perhaps not surprising that San Francisco-based literary quarterly Zoetrope: All-Story runs a movie-related story in every issue (it is published by Francis Ford Coppola). Still, it is always interesting to see the original stories upon which many movies are based reprinted for analysis and comparison. Their latest issue, beautifully designed by Iranian film-maker and photographer Abbas Kiarostami, has a reprint of Lucy Alibar’s one-act play Juicy and Delicious, which was memorably converted into the low-budget, all conquering film Beasts of the Southern Wild.
If you haven’t seen the film yet, do so. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and the Camera d’Or at Cannes this year. The bookmakers have it as fifth favourite to lift Best Picture and Best Director (Benh Zeitlin) at next year’s Academy Awards. Its two main actors, Quvenzanhé Wallis and Dwight Henry are second and third favourites respectively to take out Best Actress and Best Actor. The incredible Quvenzanhé Wallis is only six years old.
The story revolves around Hushpuppy, a little girl who lives alone with her firm but wise father Wink in a fictitious Louisiana community called the Bathtub, so named because it is an island surrounded by flood waters. Her mother is mysteriously absent, but much talked about. Hushpuppy is schooled by her father and enigmatic teacher how to survive in this broken land, an entirely necessary education due to the area’s propensity to flood and Wink’s life-threatening illness. Hushpuppy also dreams of Aurochs—giant prehistoric hogs that are thawing out in the Antarctic and heading to the Bathtub to wreak havoc and precipitate the end of the world.
As presented in Zoetrope, the original play upon which this was based is only ten pages long and was written by Lucy Alibar in response to her own previously invincible father’s sickness. It was performed in New York and the playwright subsequently moved on to another project. Then she bumped into Renh Zeitlin, a playwright and film-maker with whom she had jointly won a prize when she was fourteen. He had loved Juicy and Delicious and already sketched out scenes and characters for a film version. The movie only cost $1.8 million to make, and most of the cast and crew had never done anything of the sort before. Five year-old Quvenzanhé Wallis was found in a school down the street from their production office and they cast her because she had a piercing scream and could burp on command, attributes that were vital for the story. The role of her father went to Dwight Henry, who owned the Buttermilk Drop Bakery across the street where they would go almost every day for lunch. Henry was a survivor of Hurricane Betsy and Katrina. Both of their performances are staggering.
The character of Hushpuppy has struck a chord with cinemagoers because of her independence, ferocity and skewed view of the world, reminiscent of Huck Finn or Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. Whilst the following example of her saying grace in the play does not appear in the finished movie, it is typical of her charm and humour:
HUSHPUPPY: (looking up at the sky) Dear God, this is possum! You made it! You put it in the field! You made it stupid enough for my daddy to run it over with his truck! Now it’s in my bowl! And it’s good! And I like it! Thank you!
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Comments
29 Oct 12 at 12:58
Gah, sold out and no online version, as far as I can tell — I’d really like to ideally see, but I’ll settle for read, the play.
Your description of the aurochs above reminded me, does anyone know why they are portrayed as giant hogs? It was probably the only thing I found a bit disappointing..
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